Every year tropical cyclones not only cause great material damage, but also pose a threat to human lives. A developed cyclone forms a gigantic thermal system several hundred kilometers wide and about 10 to 15 km high. Due to the destructive force of tropical cyclones affected countries pay a great attention to the monitoring, studying and forecasting the travel direction and strength of these elements to prevent, if nothing else, at least the loss of human lives by means of population evacuation.
There is a whole range of protected technical solutions aimed at the protection of structures against the destructive force of these elements. However, there are only a limited number of known technical solutions aimed directly at the reduction of the destructive force of these elements and considering the reoccurring problems with such solutions the efficiency of their use can be doubted.
Available literature describes for example a system called DYNOMAT, the principle of which is to reduce cyclone's destructive force by dropping several tons (4 tons quoted) of Dyn-o-gel granules from an aircraft to the eye of a developing cyclone. By absorbing the moisture from the tropical cyclone environment this material increases its volume 2000 times (8000 tons in total) and its own gravity is intended to reduce the cyclone's strength. However, the result of such an operation is not known from the literature—it has been studied for several years and funding for necessary experiments is being sought. Presumed disadvantage of this method is the amount of substance added to the system—4 tons are not sufficient to have an impact on the total strength of the cyclone.
Other systems described in the literature focus on suppressing cyclone's strength by waves transmitted to the cyclone location. One such a solution is the subject of the US Patent Application Publication 2003/085296 describing a method of influencing the formation and direction of atmospheric systems that are likely to further develop by transmitting sound waves of 100 Hz to 2000 Hz generated by the frequency generators to the space in the cyclone's vicinity in the direction against its assumed advancement, which should disrupt the destructive force of the cyclone.
The physical principle of vibration forms also the basis of the “vertical shock” method intending to use so called “percussion bombs” repeatedly at the outer rim of a cyclone. However, debates in available literature suggest that an attempt to destruct a cyclone in this way may have an adverse effect, due to the fact that the thermal energy of the warm ocean water needs to be dissipated and thus it could possibly cause development of other even stronger cyclones. An incorrect frequency, wrong timing and a resonance effect could allegedly lead even to increasing the cyclone's circulation.
To reduce tropical cyclone's destructive force is also the aim of the solution protected by Patent RU 2 020 797 utilizing the effects of heat produced in a plurality of sun energy absorbing containers that help to initiate formation of local accelerated air flows and increase the cloud cover at the tropical cyclone's periphery. A disadvantage of this solution, in addition to having just a local one-shot impact, is that rather than removing heat some extra heat is added to the system which, if not spent in a periphery storm, is available to the system for several days and it can join another storm or a cyclone, and thus, increase their negative impact.
Other solutions are intended to reduce the sea water temperature in the vicinity of tropical cyclones. For example, the method and system of hurricane formation suppression (US Patent application 2002/008155) the principle of which is to detect early hurricane formation over the open sea and immediately cool the open sea water surface, where the water surface is cooled directly by sea water pumped up from cooler layers to the surface by means of a submarine pumping and distributing the cool water over the surface. The spot to be cooled is located by means of a satellite link. According to the document DE 1994635 the water surface is cooled by pumping cooler sea water and freezing it into ice blocks directly on board of a ship, which blocks are then applied in the location of an active tropical cyclone.
Known from the available literature is also the STORMFURY project carried out in the USA for several years and focusing on hurricane formation suppression by stimulating artificial flow at the outer side of the hurricane eye by means of aerial dispersion of silver iodide expected to radically cool down the water resulting in disrupting hurricane's inner structure. This project was evaluated as a failure and cancelled.
Similar to this project is the solution presented in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,441,200, which proposes to initiate self-destruction of a tropical cyclone by applying a hydration agent, specifically a powder sodium tartrate (or alternatively cupric sulphate), into the eyewall of a tropical cyclone, which should result in the increase of cyclone's circulation power with the hydration agent binding the water present in the tropical cyclone and creating heavier drops that have a tendency to get out of the eyewall, thus enlarging the diameter of the tropical cyclone up to expected self-destruction.
US Patent Application Publication 2002/0008155 discloses a method and system for inhibiting or weakening the formation of hurricanes, by detecting the onset of a hurricane in a region of open water and immediately cooling the surface water in the open water region. In the described preferred embodiments, the surface water is cooled by using one or more nuclear-powered submarines to pump cooler water at a depth in the open water region to the surface of the open water region.
Considering the fact that problems with tropical cyclones (cyclones and typhoons) prevail and up to now none of the above solutions is known to have been successfully applied in practice, the proof of which was also the situation in 2004 when several cyclones occurred at the same time and resulted in an extraordinary high damage, one can express doubts about the efficiency of the proposed solutions or even the feasibility of their use in the recent future.
The purpose of this invention is to propose a solution suppressing the tropical cyclone's destructive force in the area of its most intense activity.